7 Of The Most Creative Twitter Campaigns

When Twitter filed with the SEC in November 2013, the social media platform had more than 232 million active monthly users, with 53 million in the U.S. With numbers like that, it’s obvious that Twitter can be used as a powerful marketing tool. But then the challenge comes with figuring out how to leverage this popular, 140-character marketing tool to drive more traffic to your website.

We’ve put together 7 creative ways you can use Twitter to set your company apart from the competition.

1. Humanize The Experience

Verizon turned to Twitter with the VerizonFiOS Twitter Campaign. Through a series of commercials, Verizon encouraged viewers to reach out to three current customers and ask questions at their Twitter handle. While some of the questions asked were legitimate, not surprisingly there were some questions that didn’t help the brand, like “Will you help me find my mom?” and “Are you robots?”

There is still some debate about whether this campaign was successful or not, but one thing Verizon did well with this ad was to humanize an experience. Even if the campaign didn’t produce the desired results, people were still talking about Verizon and their FiOS service, which is a positive thing.

What Verizon did right:

Helped real customers interact with other real customers

Gave customers a way to interact on social media

Brought a human side to the brand

Made people talk

2. Involve Your Audience

During a soccer game in South America, Coca Cola turned tweets sent to the company during the game into confetti, which was then thrown out to the crowd. This was a great way to interact with customers in a current setting, with their own content. The company took a real-time event, where actual customers were in attendance, and brought the company to the people. And who doesn’t love confetti?

What Coca Cola did right:

Used a current event to their advantage

Sent content in a fun and playful way

Used creativity to connect with their audience

Involved current customers at a live event

3. Use Information Wisely

Many companies use Twitter to answer customer questions, but KLM, a Dutch airline, has taken this to the next level. Instead of simply having a back-and-forth with customers, KLM updates in real time on Twitter. Every five minutes, the Twitter cover photo is updated with the new estimated “hold times.” This makes it easy for customers know what to expect from the company and offers real-time insight.

What KLM did right:

Interacted with the customer in real time

Included transparency to set customers’ expectations

Used social media to address a negative to produce a positive outcome

4. Know The Local Crowd

Luvs discovered that there are a lot of moms in Brooklyn with babies, but without cars. The Lullaby Lift campaign was created, offering moms with sleepless babies in Brooklyn an opportunity to go on a soothing taxi ride to rock their baby to sleep. All the moms had to do was tweet #LullabyLift for a ride. Over the course of two nights, Brooklyn families got a lift, while many more people across the country participated in the campaign online.

What Luvs did right:

Discovered a local need

Catered to a specific location and target demographic

Built brand awareness by opening the campaign to the online world

5. Be Timely

Domino’s Pizza in the UK looked to the lunch crowd for their Knock Down the Price of Pizza campaign. For every tweet sent with the hashtag #letsdolunch, Dominos knocked off £0.01 for its most popular pizza. The price eventually went from £15.99 to £7.74 for a large pepperoni pizza. This was a clever, one-off campaign that quickly got fans interacting with the company during the lunch hour.

What Dominos did right:

Targeted a specific time to target the right audience

Let customers do the advertising for the brand by offering an incentive

6. Remember Holidays

To help customers have a memorable Valentine’s Day, Kraft turned to Ted Williams, the famous voice discovered on the street, to send personalized videos for their Kraft Valentines Tweets campaign. This campaign was both fun and creative, offering fans a chance to create a personal message for the ones they love, while still taking advantage of a recognized voice. What better way to surprise that special someone than by having your tweet read by the “Golden Voice of Love?” All customers had to do was tweet #voiceoflove to Kraft for a chance to have their love message read by Williams.

What Kraft did right:

Focused on a holiday

Added a personal touch

7. Tie into Top Influencers

NetWorld Solutions created GoGranny as a way to spoof competitor GoDaddy’s Superbowl ads. The mockumentary vignettes featured Cloris Leachman and were hosted on YouTube. The sassy “GoGranny” took over Twitter for three days during Super Bowl weekend and tweeted carefully targeted messages that caught the attention of influencers like Guy Kawasaki and Scott Monty. Top mommy bloggers at BlogHer also participated. In just five days, the campaign had inspired 3,000 tweets and 20 million impressions on Twitter. #GoGranny also became a trending topic. Besides the attention the campaign garnered, the company saw sales of its .CO domain increase by more than 500% during Super Bowl weekend.

What NetWorld did right:

Used a celebrity endorsement

Utilized other social networks

Don’t toss Twitter to the side thinking it’s only a social connector. Social media can be a powerful marketing tool to promote brand and increase awareness. How will you use Twitter for your next marketing campaign?

Elli Bishop is a writer for BusinessBee. For more tips on how to successfully run and build your business, follow them on Google+ here.

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